[Location: Gaius' Tower – Workshop, Night]
The tower always smelled of dust and dried herbs.
It was comforting — a scent that spoke of old books and older minds.
I'd spent the last few nights here, pretending to help Gaius organize his scrolls while secretly stabilizing my Quantum field. The old man was sharper than he looked. You couldn't fool him for long.
He turned a page with one gnarled finger. "You've been awake every night this week."
I didn't look up. "Can't sleep. Too many thoughts."
"Thoughts," he murmured, "or energy?"
That made me glance at him. His eyes — pale and steady — were fixed not on me, but through me, as though he could see the faint shimmer of mana that lingered beneath my skin.
"Whatever you're holding inside you," he said, "it doesn't move like ordinary magic. It's colder. More… deliberate."
"Call it a bad side effect of my experiments," I said lightly.
"Experiments?"
I hesitated. Words from another world hung on my tongue — quantum field resonance, entanglement harmonics, energy modulation. None of it would mean anything here.
So I found a middle ground.
"I studied the way energy interacts with matter," I said. "Tried to control it. It didn't go as planned."
Gaius nodded slowly. "Power gained through knowledge often outpaces wisdom. Camelot has learned that lesson the hard way."
He moved to his shelf, selecting a thin volume bound in faded leather. "There's something you might find useful. Merlin has read it a dozen times, though he never understood half of it."
He handed it to me. The title was written in Old Tongue — but the diagrams inside were unmistakable. Circles. Lines. Channels of flow.
Mana structures.
But… the geometries weren't too far from the sigils I'd learned under Balthazar.
"Where did this come from?" I asked quietly.
Gaius smiled. "From before Camelot's time. From when men still sought to understand the world, not just survive in it."
[Location: Gaius' Tower – Balcony, Later]
Candlelight flickered across the open pages. Outside, the night stretched wide, full of unseen constellations.
I mapped the ancient diagrams against my own calculations — lines and sigils transforming into coordinates and vectors in my mind.
Mana flow followed leyline geometry, yes, but also reacted to perception. The observer changed the field.
Quantum uncertainty — applied to magic.
Gaius stepped beside me. "You're not reading like a student," he said. "You're translating."
"Old habits," I said. "I used to teach myself how to see systems under chaos."
He chuckled softly. "Then perhaps the chaos was always waiting for you."
[Location: Workshop – Pre-dawn]
When Merlin stumbled in before sunrise, his eyes still half-closed, I was still working. The air around me shimmered faintly with blue and gold threads — quantum mana locked in patterned flow.
"You've been up all night again," he groaned.
"Found something," I said. "This world's magic structure… it responds to observation."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning it changes if you understand it. Gaius's diagrams — they're a model of localized energy feedback. If I modify them slightly—"
I gestured. The lines flared, forming a sphere of light that hovered between us. Then I looked at it differently — adjusted my focus, my belief, my intent.
The sphere's color shifted — gold to violet, then transparent.
Merlin stared. "That's— impossible."
"Or maybe," I said quietly, "it's just physics."
[Location: Gaius' Tower – Later Morning]
When Gaius returned, he found the both of us passed out on the floor — the air still humming faintly from the experiment.
He didn't scold. He simply smiled that knowing smile of his.
"Careful," he said. "There are few things more dangerous than a curious mind."
I managed a tired grin. "Story of my life."
He paused, hand on the door. "Ren, whatever path brought you here… I think you were meant to find this place. Not as a punishment. As preparation."
The words stayed with me long after he left.
For the first time since my escape from the lab, the idea of purpose didn't sound like a lie.
[End of Chapter 10]